My Worship Revolution

Awhile back I wrote this post about the song How He Loves Loves Us and David Crowder's change ot the Sloppy Wet Kiss line.

Well, I'm a little behind since this came out a couple weeks ago, but I just came across a post from the original song writer, John Mark McMillan about the lyric change and his own thoughts on it.

I highly recommend checking it out. I also appreciate that he shares his own heart in what was behind the lyric in the first place.Here's a couple of excerpts from what he had to say:

"The
idea behind the lyric is that the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of
earth converge in a way that is both beautiful and awkwardly messy.
Think about the birth of a child, or even the death of Jesus himself.
These miracles are both incredibly beautiful and incredibly sloppy
("gory" may be more realistic, but “Heaven meets earth like a gory
mess” didn’t seem to have the same ring). Why does the church have such
a problem with things being sloppy? Do we really think we’re fooling
anyone on Sunday morning, especially God?"

"I
applaud David for changing the line to serve his people, and at the
same time I boo the machinery that would cause him to have to do so."

Love the lyric.Love his thoughts.Love his heart.

For those who know the song and sing it at a church, just curious, does his explanation of the lyric help any of those who don't care for the lyric in corporate worship sing it?Or is it still too much of a leap for ya?

2 Responses to “Sloppy Wet Kiss Revisited”

Yeah. I get that jdog. I’m just one of those that has trouble leaving it there. I see both sides. On one hand, as worship leaders, our job is to give people word and songs to express their hearts to God in a way that fits them.
But on the other hand, we also need to make them uncomfortable at times, teach about worship, and push them to expand their vocabulary to God at times as well.
Here’s a thought. Why is it that we feel the need to throw some hymns in the mix for the more traditional folks at the expense of some of the younger, and that is expected to be OK, however many of those people are not OK with us doing the same in the other direction? If we are leading for a multigenerational expression of worship, should we not include both voices and encourage them to join with and respect each others expressions?
Hmmm. I think I feel another blog post coming on. Part 3?

Bobby…a few months back I had our high school worship leader leading in “big church”…he wanted to do “How He Loves” which we both loved from the Kim Walker version. However, he was not comfortable singing the “sloppy” part. We talked about it and his reasoning (which agreed with mine) was that it was way more likely to be a distraction than to be an enhancement in helping the people in our gatherings to draw nearer to God. So we re-wrote the line in a way that we believed would honor the writer’s intention/emotion, but would not divert people’s attention,(long before we heard the DC*B version) I’m really glad to hear John Mark’s explanation of the original thought, and appreciate the art in it, and also how Crowder sought his input. (and realized that it might have a negative impact)…We sing this song in “our version” and it always evokes an emotional response even without the sloppy part,,,but I would sing the sloppy part if it does not trip up your flock…j